Book Image

Reconnaissance for Ethical Hackers

By : Glen D. Singh
5 (1)
Book Image

Reconnaissance for Ethical Hackers

5 (1)
By: Glen D. Singh

Overview of this book

This book explores reconnaissance techniques – the first step in discovering security vulnerabilities and exposed network infrastructure. It aids ethical hackers in understanding adversaries’ methods of identifying and mapping attack surfaces, such as network entry points, which enables them to exploit the target and steal confidential information. Reconnaissance for Ethical Hackers helps you get a comprehensive understanding of how threat actors are able to successfully leverage the information collected during the reconnaissance phase to scan and enumerate the network, collect information, and pose various security threats. This book helps you stay one step ahead in knowing how adversaries use tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to successfully gain information about their targets, while you develop a solid foundation on information gathering strategies as a cybersecurity professional. The concluding chapters will assist you in developing the skills and techniques used by real adversaries to identify vulnerable points of entry into an organization and mitigate reconnaissance-based attacks. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a solid understanding of reconnaissance, as well as learned how to secure yourself and your organization without causing significant disruption.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Part 1: Reconnaissance and Footprinting
8
Part 2: Scanning and Enumeration

Performing directory enumeration

Sometimes, web administrators and IT professionals unintentionally expose sensitive and restricted directories and files on their web applications and servers on the internet. If a threat actor were to find confidential data within a hidden directory on a target’s web server, it can be leveraged to plan and perform future attacks on the target.

This section focuses on using various tools and techniques to discover hidden directories and files as an ethical hacker.

Using GoBuster to find hidden directories

GoBuster is a brute-force tool used to identify the sub-domains, directories, files, and hostnames of a target.

To get started with using GoBuster to find hidden directories and files of a domain, use the following instructions:

  1. Firstly, power on the Kali Linux virtual machine.
  2. Next, open the Terminal and use the following commands to update the software package repository list and install GoBuster:
    kali@kali:~$ sudo apt...